Gup Chup

I absolutely love my culture and my hometown. As a kid you don't see negativity, all you see is people loving you and welcoming you. Best part about my hometown is that the common people are very loving and welcoming. It's a beautiful culture. I feel glad that I belong to an absolute gem of a culture and place. Though every place has at least two level of realities, but I am glad that the reality that concerns me, the common people, the culture is absolutely beautiful. I sometimes visit, small chai shops in my hometown and even Varanasi just to smell the earthy, the motherly smell from the sarees of middle aged and old women in the chai shops. I love eating bhuja on thelas, as my existence is pretty much non-political it's almost a bliss to immerse myself in culture of my land. I have had a beautiful childhood. Running to local kirana wala everytime I used to get money when I went to my village in summer vacations to get churan, namkeen and sweets. In the lazy summer afternoons, reading comics inside the naturally cool room of my village home. Villages were beautiful in the 90s, and I suppose even better in the 80s and going further back. I was there in the 90s so I can vouch for the 90s. It's a bit of confusion in whether the villages actually have become worse or I have grown up. But it feels like they have actually become worse, there is a liquor shop in the village which was not there before. I remember people having genuine respect for political leaders back then, I really do remember it very clearly, now all I see is parasites following politicians. Villages in the country became the first casualty of mass politicisation and and weaponisation of politics. If you want to know how my village actually felt like, I'd suggest you watch a movie called 'Nadiya Ke Paar' it's a beautiful movie and for me, nostalgia. I anyway know too much now and there is no going back to the ignorance is bliss stage. The problem with ignorance is that you live and die delusional and I prefer to suffer knowing the truth than remaining delusional. Though I don't like disturbing people's happy delusions, but in present times good people can't really afford delusions, it's absolute scum reigning, and I don't mean any political party, these scums are independent of any political party and no matter the party in power, they are constant. The downfall of culture in this country has been tremendous, but one cannot really blame people for saving themsleves. I'm glad that my culture is still preserved even if in bits and pieces, but I also know that the modernization has intentionally been channelised in a way that upon mixing with so called modernity and progression it creates a grotesque mongrel. How strange is it, the people who preserve the actual culture, no not the religion but the actual culture, are at the bottom of the hierarchy. The parents of the millenials are the last innocent generation. Any generation beyond that has realised that minding one's own business and being a hypocrite is the way to go. My hometown still preserves culture in the lower strata, the original, authentic love filled culture while the middle class have become mongrels chasing IITs and modernity. I don't know how long the culture will last but I hope that I don't live to see its demise.